Excess use of laptop

[wootwoot]

I've had my Acer lappy as a desktop replacement for about 2 years now and it's starting to really get laggy. The thing is, it's on almost constantly, everyday for at least 6-8 hours. I keep it plugged in, which is a bad thing, but the battery life was never that long to begin with. Startup is slow, opening programs/browsers takes forever, the administrative warnings can take up to 5 minutes to pop up, and FPS in my games have dropped by about 30%.

Specs:
Windows Vista SP2
AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core QL-64 2.1ghz
HD 3200
220 GB HD
4 GB RAM

I regularly run Defraggler and CCleaner as well, which makes this all the more frustrating. I feel the computer deteriorating significantly the more I use it and since I'm a student, I need a decent comp. Help?

 

[MindoverMaster]

Bring up the Run prompt. Type msconfig, Go to startup tab. Anything in there that is not recognizable is probably hosing up your system.

Also, bring up the Task Manager. By ctrl + alt + del, or typing it in the start search bar. See what is using all the resources, RAM or CPU usage.